Our Own Little Tiger

Charley was copying this girl we had seen earlier in the day who was posing as a tiger (grrrr) in front of the lame Shangri-La Animatronic Tigers. Guess it beats the peace sign.

And 500 RMB well spent ...................

going up the Bottle Opener or World Financial Centre (not). We were up in the clouds which probably wasn't a bad thing as it has a clear platform where you can see down to the ground. In our case, just down to the clouds :-) The whole top part of the "bottle opener" is missing!!

This is why we wanted to leave Shanghai for SPRING Festival

Spring it ain't. Yes, that's snow on the ground. Freezing!!

The Bund - Night and Day

Here is our view of The Bund from our hotel room. Pretty special.

Welcome The Year of the Tiger

Gōng xǐ fā cái. Happy New Year. How exciting to be living in China during the Chinese New Year celebrations. Typical of us we left it too late to organise to go anywhere for Chinese New Year although to go anywhere internally is problematic at best. Who wants to go on holidays with 1.3 billion other people. It was a pity too because it was soooo cold here and it would have been nice to get to the warmth somewhere. So, to make it up to the kids we booked in to the Shangri-La - Shay's favourite place :-) for a couple of nights. The hotel presented us with the traditional Chinese New Year gifts of money and oranges. They also had what was hyped up to be this really cool animatronic tiger exhibition which proved to be a bit lame. We just spent the time relaxing and in between rain and snow showers, having a look around. We also revisited our favourite buffet - 'cos we love a buffet! The hotel also had the traditional dragon dance and fireworks. I can only describe the fireworks in Shanghai during that time as what I would imagine it would be like to live in a war zone. The noise was incredible.

School Chinese New Year Concert

Another fantastic school concert. Each grade (including secondary) performed a Chinese song and dance. The school also organised some professional dancers which were truly amazing. It all culminated in a whole school performance. A lot of effort by the children and teachers went into the performance but boy was it worth it. Amazing!! More photos to follow.